The extraordinary move by European leaders to adopt the ideology of expansionary austerity as a legal requirement was met with an even stranger reaction here in the U.S. On Friday, twenty-six European countries signed on to a plan that would impose contractionary austerity policies across the continent. At the same time, the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi was clearly explaining the central bank would not use its balance sheet to bring down rates on sovereign debt . And yet nearly everyone in the U.S. watched this and just assumed that the opposite would happen. The Eurocracy would not really follow through on ... (full story)